THE LIVERPOOL ROAD EPISODE 1

 THE LIVERPOOL ROAD 

EPISODE 1

The rain was turning to snow.wet flakes swooped through the air to plaster themselves on the windscreen where the wipers pushed them aside.The headlight beams lit up the road ahead,picking out the branches of winter trees and the black,leafless hedges.The wind buffered the cab of lorry,whistling through the cracks round the door and by the driver's feet in dozen cutting draughts.Beside him,under the cowling,roared the big diesel engine 

which drove the vehicle on through the bitter weather.

  The dancing curtain of snow threw back the light,showing the driver's pallid face,his cloth cap pulled down over his forehead and his leather jacket buttoned up around his neck.He wore heavy leather gloves in which his hands swung the steering wheel to guide the eight wheeled lorry over the winding,undulating road,He approached the level crossing at blythe bridge cautiously,but there was no need to stop:the gates were open to the road.At meir he took the left fork to avoid the long descent to Trentham.The roads were whitw now.At trentham he joined the main london manchesterroad ,and under the orange glare of the overhead light saw other lorries,those cuming south heavily covered with snow,their names,ropes,sheets,loads all obliterated,all but the black sectors on the windscreens,which the wipers continually swept clear.

 Under the leather coat,the muffler and the jacket,jack hastings wire a blue ‘boiler suit'.in the inside pocket lay folded the red,yellow and white consignment notes for his load;and ‘what a load!' he had thought to himself when he collected it the previous day.Three separate deliveries on three seperate docks!And the six cases 

he had loaded last had to be alongside the ship by eight o'clock He remembered handling into a position on the floor of his wagon.

 What is it,if wasn‘t a wagon?' jack hastings had said .

 Why , a truck ,' Harry had answered.‘in the news paper they called them trucks.On the television they always say,‘‘A truck laden with £50,000 worth of cigrattes has been stolen.

 His young daugter had joined him.

 I thought you are a lorry driver,Daddy ,so why didn't you call it a lorry ?.

   A lorry,a wagon ;jack Hastlings had said,‘but not a truck.That's the American word.' He reached for the cake.now let's have that television program you wanted.'

 They had settle down before they fire to watch a film about the life of the Negrito people of malaya.they had watched without comment.then hastling had said ,‘That's a concidence;I have six cases of books for malaya on the back of my load.'

That part of his load was be delivered to M.V odysseus which was lying in Gladstone Dock,Liverpool.then he was to go to clarensce Dock,to unload ten tons of diesel egines packed in crates and bound for Helsinki,and the last of all he was to run through the tunnel under thrle river Mersey to Birkehead with five tons of cases containing woodworking machinery for Bogota,Colombia.

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